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National Novel Writing Month: NaNoWriMo. It’s a thing. I’ve participated for several years now, winning a couple of times (winning means writing 50,000 words of dubious merit in 30 days) or not winning sometimes. Since I started writing my “Hot Off the Press” Veronika Layne mystery series, I have found NaNoWriMo to be an excellent way to draft a new book in the series. I’m writing my third Veronika story now, after just launching the second book at an epic…

I spend a lot of my time howling the cosmic yawp into the blue beyond. It looks, to mortal eyes, like I’m making lunch and beating a deadline and running errands and remembering to put out the trash cans. But I assure you, a goodly portion of every day is given over to caterwauling (mostly in my inside voice but not always) on the WHY of everyday living. The WHY of how did we get here? The WHY of how…

First things first: Say “shelf-sitters” three times. Fast. Do it. You said self-shitters, didn’t you? You did. I know it. What is a shelf-sitter? It’s a term I have heard used only once in my life, but appropriated and used, at least in my mind, ever since. In third grade, Miss Ellis had a list of books we were to check out from the library on our once-weekly visit: An autobiography. A non-fiction book. A book about an animal. A…

I’ve come to that cross-road in a writer’s life where she has to choose between writing what she wants and writing what earns her bread. It might even be one of those modern five-way stoplights where several roads merge and one must decide whether to turn gently to the right, to join the path ahead, or — most alarming of all — veer to the left and go against the traffic, hoping for a break in the rush to slip…

I just finished reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. I read Go Set a Watchman when it first came out last month, and read it before reading the beloved old favorite. And despite all the drama, histrionics and harrumphing by TKAM’s defenders of the holy tract and the way things have always been, I must say, I don’t see the issue. Atticus Finch is a racist. How is that shocking? Small-town Alabama, in the Great…